Mike Arnesen

About Mike Arnesen

This blog post has been a long time coming. In one sense, it’s taken me the better part of 2018 to organize my thoughts on the topic and actually, y’know, write this blog post. In another sense, writing this post has taken my whole life.

Once upon a time, I had a boss who would often describe my ideas as “bleeding edge”. I never much liked the description, because — frankly — it sounded disgusting. However, the term is meant to describe something a step beyond the cutting edge. An idea or strategy “so new and untested as to be potentially unreliable and carry a higher risk-to-reward ratio.” I’m not sure that applied to much of what I was doing back then in 2014 (well, there were a few things) but it certainly applies to this.

You’ll want to apply “potentially” and “theoretically” qualifiers to pretty much everything in this post. I think it’s worth taking action on this, but the benefits are as yet unproven. Note that, contrary to the definition of “bleeding edge” above, I think the risk here is almost non-existent while the potential upside is high.

This is an exact thought that went through my head at the beginning of this week. Yesterday was a new team member’s first day (Hi, Nick!) and, as such, there was a lot going on. On top of that, we also were kicking off a new client (Thanks for going with us, Jenni and Helen!). On top of that, we ran into a big issue with a keyword research project for a current client that had to be dealt with before EOD. Oh, and it was a Monday, so there’s that, too.

My point is that there was a lot in motion and, in the startup agency game, that’s typically when things start to break down and fall apart. The great thing is…nothing did.

All of this was particularly fitting for the eve of UpBuild’s three-year anniversary — despite it being one of the most active days in recent memory, everything worked. Sure, there was stress and, yeah, no one got to Inbox Zero that day, but when we all logged off in the evening everything was stable and humming along nicely. The team could rest easy and know that we’d have tomorrow to sort the rest of it out.

Earlier this year, TINYpulse — a lightweight employee engagement tool we use at UpBuild — announced that UpBuild earned the award for “Happiest Company of 2017” in the Marketing & Advertising category! This was based on our team’s average happiness ratings from our weekly mini-surveys throughout the year. We came back with an average score of 9 out of 10, beating the Marketing & Advertising industry standard by 22%!

This is an incredible honor and I think I can speak for the team in saying, “We’re super pumped to be acknowledged as the happiest company in Marketing & Advertising”! As icing on the cake, TINYpulse even sent us a physical award. This gorgeous thing (which is nearly impossible to photograph well) now sits in UpBuild HQ and may have to make an appearance at UpBuild’s next Team Day. [Read more…] about UpBuild is TINYpulse’s Happiest Company of 2017